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Racism is the Foundation of Israel’s Operation Protective Edge

How pervasive anti-Arabism has paved the way for Israel's latest assault on Gaza.

by JOEL BEININ

On June 30 Ayelet Shaked, chairwoman of the Knesset faction of the ultra-right wing ha-Bayit ha-Yehudi (Jewish Home) Party, a key member of the coalition government led by Prime Minister Netanyahu, posted on her Facebook page a previously unpublished article written by the late Uri Elitzur. Elitzur, a pro-settler journalist and former chief-of-staff to Netanyahu, wrote

Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism… They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now, this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They must follow their sons. Nothing would be more just. They should go, as well as the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.

Shaked’s post appeared the day the bodies of three abducted settler teens­—Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaar, and Eyal Yifrach—were discovered. It has since received more than 5,200 “likes.”

For over two weeks, Netanyahu and the media whipped the country into a hysterical state, accusing Hamas of responsibility for abducting the teens without providing evidence to support the claim and promoting hopes that they would be found alive, although the government knew that the boys were likely murdered within minutes of their abduction. Their deaths provided a pretext for more violent expressions of Israeli anti-Arab racism than ever before.

The international community typically sees the manifestations of Israel’s violent racism only when they erupt as assaults on the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, or Lebanon.

The viciousness of Mordechai Kedar, lecturer in Arabic literature at Bar Ilan University, was even more creative than Shaked and Elitzur’s merely genocidal proposal. “The only thing that can deter terrorists like those who kidnapped the children and killed them,” he said, “is the knowledge that their sister or their mother will be raped.” As a university-based “expert,” Kedar’s heinous suggestion is based on his “understanding” of Arab culture. “It sounds very bad, but that’s the Middle East,” he explained, hastening to add, “I’m not talking about what we should or shouldn’t do. I’m talking about the facts.”

Racism has become a legitimate, indeed an integral, component of Israeli public culture, making assertions like these seem “normal.” The public devaluation of Arab life enables a society that sees itself as “enlightened” and “democratic” to repeatedly send its army to slaughter the largely defenseless population of the Gaza Strip—1.8 million people, mostly descendants of refugees who arrived during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, and have been, to a greater or lesser extent, imprisoned since 1994.

Conciliatory gestures, on the other hand, are scorned. Just two days after Shaked’s Facebook post, Orthodox Jews kidnapped 16-year-old Muhammad Abu Khdeir from the Shu‘afat neighborhood of East Jerusalem and burned him alive in the Jerusalem Forest. Amir Peretz (Hatnua) was the only government minister to visit the grieving family. For this effort he received dozens of posts on his Facebook page threatening to kill him and his family. Meanwhile, vandals twice destroyed memorials erected to Abu Khdeir on the spot of his immolation.

The international community typically sees the manifestations of Israel’s violent racism only when they erupt as assaults on the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, or Lebanon. But Israel’s increasingly poisonous anti-Arab and anti-Muslim public culture prepares the ground of domestic public opinion long before any military operation and immunizes the army from most criticism of its “excesses.” Moreover, Israeli anti-democratic and racist sentiment is increasingly directed against Palestinian citizens of Israel, who comprise 20% of the population.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman of the Yisrael Beytenu (Israel Is Our Home) Party made his political reputation on the slogan “No Loyalty, No Citizenship”—a demand that Palestinian Israelis swear loyalty oaths as a condition of retaining their citizenship. Since 2004 Lieberman has also advocated “transferring” Palestinian-Israelis residing in the Triangle region to a future Palestinian state, while annexing most West Bank settlements to Israel. In November 2011 Haaretz published a partial list of ten “loyalty-citizenship” bills in various stages of legislation designed to “determine certain citizens' rights according to their ‘loyalty’ to the state.”

While Lieberman and other MKs pursue legal channels to legally undermine the citizenship of Palestinian-Israelis, their civil rights are already in serious danger. In 2010 eighteen local rabbis warned that the Galilee town of Safed faced an “Arab takeover” and instructed Jewish residents to inform on and boycott Jews who sold or rented dwellings to Arabs. In addition to promoting segregated housing, Safed’s Chief Rabbi, Shmuel Eliyahu, tried to ban Arab students from attending Safed Academic College (about 1,300 Palestinian-Israelis are enrolled, some of whom live in Safed). The rabbinical statement incited rampages by religious Jews chanting “Death to the Arabs,” leading Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy to dub Safed “the most racist city” in Israel. In Karmiel and Upper Nazareth—towns established as part of Israel’s campaign to “Judaize the Galilee”—elected officials have led similar campaigns.

Palestinian Israeli Knesset members receive regular verbal abuse from their Jewish “colleagues.” For example, Hanin Zoabi (National Democratic Alliance), who participated in the 2010 Freedom Flotilla to the Gaza Strip, which Israeli naval commandos attacked, killing nine Turks (one of whom also held U.S. citizenship), has been particularly targeted. In the verbal sparring over the murder of the three teens Foreign Minister Lieberman called her a “terrorist.” Not to be outdone, Miri Regev (Likud) said Zoabi should be “expelled to Gaza and stripped of her [Knesset] immunity.” Other Knesset members—some from putatively “liberal” parties—piled on. [Update: Yesterday—July 29—Hanin Zoabi was suspended from Knesset].

Violence against Arabs in and around Israeli-annexed “Greater Jerusalem” is particularly intense. Much of it is the work of Orthodox Jews. The Jewish Defense League, banned in Israel in 1994 and designated a terrorist organization by the FBI in 2001, and several similar groups regularly assault and harass Arabs. The day of the funeral of the three abducted teens, some 200 Israelis rampaged through the streets of Jerusalem chanting “Death to Arabs.” The previous evening, hardcore fans of the Betar Jerusalem football club, known as La Familia, rallied chanting, “Death to the Arabs.” The same chant is frequently heard at games of the team, which is associated with the Likud and does not hire Arab players. Hate marches, beatings and shootings of Arabs, and destruction of their property, long common in the West Bank, have become regular events in Israel-proper in the last month.

The citizenship-loyalty bills, Safed’s designation as “the most racist city,” the attacks volleyed at Palestinian elected officials, and mob violence against Arabs all took place before Israel launched Operation Protective Edge on July 8. The operation—more aggressively dubbed “Firm Cliff” in Hebrew—constitutes Israel’s third assault on the Gaza Strip since 2008. As of yesterday, July 29, the Palestinian death toll in that operation has reached over 1,200, the great majority of them civilians. Thirty-two Israeli soldiers and three civilians have also died. Israeli security officials sardonically call these operations “mowing the lawn” because well-informed observers know that Hamas cannot be uprooted and is capable of rebuilding its military capacity. There is no long-term strategy, except, as Gideon Levy put it, to kill Palestinians. Major General (res.) Oren Shachor elaborated, “If we kill their families, that will frighten them.” And what might deter Israel?

Comments

Thanks for this. A recent article in Haaretz underlined the extent to which racism is an integral and growing part of Israeli society, especially and most obviously among the young. Most polls indicate that around 70% or more of Israeli youth are in favor of apartheid in Israel and the recent Gaza War has made dissent in Israel even more difficult than ever before. Indeed, the crackdown on any form of dissent has become intense, with efforts to criminalize left-wing NGOs like B'tselem. The reality that Israeli youth cut their teeth by serving as occupiers in the occupied territory has further contributed to the dehumanization of Palestinians. In the end, your central thesis is easily supported by the facts. Racism has become absolutely essential to Israeli identity and it helps to make possible the kind of attacks that are going on now in Gaza.

I do not believe you have shared much of value here.No mention of the Palestinians persecuting christians and driving them out.The rise of antisemitism is alive and well in the us.My hope is that your student take what you preach and read beyond your revisionist history.

Anger and violence don't always result from racism. When you are angry at people for what they do, that is not racism. The Arab Israeli dispute is based on nationalism and religion far more than race. But calling somebody a "Racist" is a more powerful hate word these days, so Beinin uses it. This is superficial and silly.

There is no "One drop rule" in Israel. There are no "Octaroons". Skin color is not a determining factor. As it happens the Jews have more diversity in skin tone than the Muslims (Arabs), so I don't think it's a question of skin.

Re: "hollywood, the media, the 4th estate in the US is run by Jews" That's bull. I am a television director - not Jewish- Jews do not run anything in my business. Business itself runs media. . Jews do not form a group, as in getting together to plan on taking over. Such a concept smacks of Protocols of Zion written by the Czarist regime to vilify all Jews as a group and believed as gospel to justify racist attutudes. True a greater proportion of Jews than non Jews are highly successful, scientists, doctors, humanitarians, entrepreneurs. Thats good not bad. Everyone should be so successful.
A good question is, what is meant by the designations of Jew, Arab, American, and most certainly Christian. I grew up Episcopalian and never want to be called Christian.

Prof. Beinin is right that Israel must do a better job of tamping down on pockets of extremism within its society. Sociologists would make the link between this incitement and the Tag Machir (price tag) attacks, and possibly the heinous murder of Muhammad Abu Khdeir (although the evidence that is emerging is that several of the perpetrators suffered from under-treated mental illness; and as far as the ‘price tag’ vigilante activities go, many Israeli politicians are demanding harsher sentences, even calling these hooligans ‘terrorists,’ and the vigilantes—numbering only a few hundred at most—have zero support within Israeli mainstream society).

But I have a hard time making the connection between a constant (the rampant and entrenched racism within the Israeli state and society, as Beinin claims) and a variable (Operation Protective Edge).

Why did a war between the governing authority of Gaza and Israel erupt in summer 2014? Hamas had been refraining from rocket attacks since the ceasefire of November 2012, and had even been patrolling the border on Israel’s behalf to curb rocket fire by other Gaza militants. Only a rational choice explanation that considers Hamas’s and Israel’s motivations in June to escalate can account for the timing of Operation Protective Edge.

Teasing out the time line through a process tracing methodology could still bring in the element of racism. Prof. Beinin could make the argument that both Israeli and Palestinian racist online vitriol that went viral on social media (Beinin ignores the ugliness of the Palestinian “3 Shalits” hashtag), and the rising tensions within Arab and Jewish communities, were conveniently exploited by both Israel and Hamas. Israel used the kidnappings as an opportunity to root out and shut down Hamas in the West Bank—arresting nearly 400 West Bank residents, raiding over 1000 institutions, putting over 200,000 Hebron residents into lock-down. Hamas also exploited the June tensions. It began firing rockets and let other militants do the same—300 rockets had been lobbed onto Israeli civilians between June 11 and July 8 when Operation Protective Edge began.

If we are using a qualitative research design, though, we need to also raise the counterfactual: if there had been no kidnappings, would Israel have spent the month of June ‘cleaning house’ in the West Bank? We can only prove this counterfactual if there were government plans in the works to ‘mop up’ Hamas operations in the West Bank. But such plans have not come to light. Would Hamas have still sought ways to build its terror tunnels and renege on its ceasefire commitments this summer? The answer is yes, because as we now know there was a mega-attack being planned through the tunnels for the Jewish New Year in late September.

There are also better ways of taking the measure of a society’s racism than relying on cherry-picked examples of a few hot-heads. One could consider the educational system. Dr. Danny Bar-Tal at Tel-Aviv University and a team of Israeli and Palestinian researchers did just that in a multiyear study recently published. It found no egregious “dehumanizing of the other” in either the Palestinian Authority or the Israeli state curricula. It did find racist messaging in some of the ultra-Orthodox textbooks, however. One could also consider official media. Following the Abu Khdeir murder the entire official Israeli political spectrum roundly condemned it. This vicious murder was universally rejected by all political and religious leaders. Over 300 Israelis went to Shuafat to visit the Khdeir family’s mourners tent (an event that was widely reported in the Israeli media, but Prof. Beinin does not mention it).

Let’s look a bit further: Israeli politicians do not name public squares after Jewish terrorists (there is no Baruch Goldstein Square in downtown Tel Aviv) and don’t demand that Jewish terrorists be released as a prerequisite to peace negotiations. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority glorifies and venerates hundreds of terrorists by calling them heroes and martyrs and celebrating them with official state parties, and its official media often includes not only anti-Israel, but also anti-Semitic messaging. And this is the PA, to say nothing of Hamas’s poisonous anti-Israel and anti-Jewish media and educational programming.

All this is not to say that Israel doesn’t have to improve, but it’s light years ahead of where the Palestinian leadership is in terms of creating an atmosphere that fosters a non-racist culture.

In regards to majority/minority relations in Israel, until the larger conflict is resolved it’s difficult to see how Jewish-Arab relations within Israel can improve, an argument made persuasively in Yitzhak Reiter’s excellent book on the topic, National Minority, Regional Majority: Palestinian Arabs Versus Jews in Israel.

By the way, Beinin mentions Uri Elizur at the start of his article. This is the same “racist” who in 2009 advanced a ‘one state’ plan (only available in Hebrew) that would have seen all Palestinians of the West Bank receive Israeli citizenship. People are complicated, even Israelis.

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